ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to highlight the obsessional features observed in an autistic child whom author treated analytically with four-times-weekly sessions for eighteen years, to relate them to the obsessional functioning in the family, particularly that of the mother. It also discusses severe obsessive–compulsive disorder in author patient's younger brother, which became apparent in the latter's late adolescence. The smell of Giulio's faeces surely had some variations, likely depending on his dietary regime, but author obsessiveness did not get to the point of classifying smells in connection to the different days of the week and seeing if there was some statistical significance. The reticulum of obsessional and autistic patterns in the family is the representation of intended absolute invariance that threatens to leave no space for transformations. The potential provided by the psychoanalytic trans-modal response, its indomitable determination to create movement in the invariant, and to give meaning to meaninglessness, constitute a tentative vital response on the complex pathways to mourning.
